Acoustic Ladyland – review

The bad news is that Acoustic Ladyland, the London band that burst out of the jazz box a decade ago with a mix of paint-stripping free-sax blasting and insolently punky rock'n'roll, is playing its final gigs. The good news is that this innovative, virtuosic and popular quartet's present lineup is staying together, with a new name and angle.

The band's popularity has been founded on a jazz awareness that embraces 1960s free-improv energies updated with a youthful relish for volume, pop hooks, and grime and garage-influenced rhythmic momentum. Technical glitches delayed the start of the Living with a Tiger set, which led to barside banter: if they didn't start, they wouldn't have to finish. Then Pete Wareham split the hum with a multiphonic tenor-sax squeal, and the group's familiar onrush of percussive sax figures, the potent Chris Sharkey's whooping guitar sounds, Ruth Goller's churning electric basslines and Seb Rochford's remarkable drumming followed. The band is a rhythm machine.

The set developed through shuddering rock riffs with farmyard-clucking sax themes, Pharoah Sanders-like banshee sounds over hammer-drill noises and chugging dance grooves for prolonged wah-wah rhythm-guitar trances. This volcanic lineup is certain to keep the heat up, whatever its next move.

At Band on the Wall, Manchester (0161-834 1786) on 17 December, then touring.

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